by Chris Harris
Emergence: Part 1
Chris Harris
Published by Chris Harris
Copyright 2014 Chris Harris
Chapter 1
Deora 1
It threw her from her bed as it smashed through the bedroom wall.
Deora tried to shield herself from the flying chunks of brick and plaster, but fell as they rushed towards her. Head spinning, she tried checking herself over for bruises or scratches, and, through blurred eyes, noticed small patches of blood on her arms. Ears rang with a piercing whine. Her nose tickled, and her eyes burned; she wiped the plaster and brick-dust from her face and shook her head, trying to clear her vision.
When it cleared, she backed away, trying to find something to haul herself up with.
The ovoid that had crashed through her wall stood in the middle of her room, completely unscathed. Eyes wide, she stared at it in a mix of horror and fascination. Xaosian? She was almost certain she was right; the sleek darkness of it was reminiscent of their culture.
She grabbed a shelf and tried to pull herself up, but the shelf buckled and she fell again. The windowsill took her weight and she ran, footfalls drumming the ground.
A pneumatic hiss.
She turned as the ovoid opened; eight large humanoids stepped out. Noticing the black, blade-like plates making up their armour, the red twin parabola insignia on their breastplates, the claws and the serpentine faces, she knew her suspicions were right. All eight Xaosians held guns. Big guns. She ducked back behind the doorframe, hoping they hadn't seen her yet. They were speaking to one another, not in the Common tongue, but in a completely different language. Xarici?
She fled, barely keeping upright. The hallway was narrow enough to give her something to cling on to, and she used the walls well enough to keep her standing.
Gunshot.
She screamed.
She had tried to resist, she really had; she'd managed when they burst through her wall. Now, she may as well have lit a beacon. She rounded a corner, into the kitchen. Heavy footfalls followed. Nearly slipping on the cold kitchen tiles, she was just able to right herself until she made it to the dining room. Something shattered in the kitchen after another gunshot. Grabbing her keys from the table, she ran out of the dining room and towards her front door.
Her hands were shaking, and the keys just scratched around the lock. She looked behind, seeing shadows enter the room. Grabbing the key with both hands, she guided it to the lock and wrenched it open. A bullet slammed into as it opened, narrowly missing her head and forcing the door from her hand. She bit back the scream this time, and stared at the bullet-hole in shock.
She continued to run, slamming the door shut behind her; it would slow them down for all of two seconds, she was sure. The dark corridors of her apartment skyscraper gave her both an advantage and a disadvantage; they couldn't see her, but she couldn't see them. There were four corridors on this first floor, each leading out from the elevator, to a single apartment. She paused briefly; if she woke them, they could get out and possibly be safe from the invaders. If she didn't, they could be murdered, or the Xaosians might pass them by altogether. Heart pounding, she glanced down her corridor, but didn't see the Xaosians. Ignoring tense muscles, ignoring that fear that gripped them, she started towards her neighbour's corridor, but a bullet passed in front of her, splintering the wall next to her. She gasped and recoiled back, heart pounding.
Too late now.
She considered going further, she really did. But she knew, with a heavy heart, that she had to abandon them, or die. She turned, punching the elevator's “call” button, pounding it until the doors opened.
Large, shadowy things moved in the darkness, coming towards her, guns raised.
The elevator doors opened, the bulb inside lighting up the corridors. She ran inside, hugging the wall so they couldn't shoot her, and hammered the “down” button. The doors shut as a barrage of bullets smashed against the back of the elevator. She breathed a sigh of relief; even a brief reprieve from fleeing was better than none. Doubled over, she tried to catch her breath, but her heart was pounding too fast for her to get her breathing back to normal. Her hands couldn't stop shaking, and the cuts on her arm were bleeding even more now, tracing rivers on her skin. They stung slightly, like papercuts, but she didn't care about that right now.
She looked up abruptly as the top of the elevator buckled, one of the Xaosians had leapt down the elevator shaft. The doors opened. She ran, turning to look back at the elevator. A panel from the top was thrown out of the elevator, clattering to the floor. The Xaosian raised its weapon and shot at her three times. They all missed, shattering the glass in the doors behind her. She ran to the doors, jumping through the gap left behind by the broken windows.
The horror outside was worse.
Hordes of Xaosian troops stormed the streets of Raan, piling off of their huge Titan-Class ships, indiscriminately slaughtering Raanians. The unmistakable roars of small Reapers filled the air, but screams and cries for help almost drowned them out. Raanian Stingers pursued them, but the Reapers seemed to be more than a match. Bombing runs had turned the streets into twisting craters with sparks flying from the ground and geysers erupting from broken pipes.
Some Raanians tried to escape in their Autos. It might have succeeded had it not been for the Xaosian tanks; large as a house, these moved on giant barrels rather than caterpillar treads, enabling it to crush everything in its path. More of the ovoid pods were fired out of the airborne Titans, smashing into the skyscrapers. Some began to crumble as multiple pods hit them, tearing the structures apart.
The Xaosian was still following her. She considered running more, but it would only follow her until it got a clean shot. She rounded a corner, running a little bit further, before doubling back and waiting at the corner.
The Xaosian rounded the corner, and she pounced on it, taking it by surprise. It dropped the gun as she twisted its arm. She heard it grunt, before smashing an armoured fist into her temple, knocking her down. Her head exploded into a world of pain, and she could feel a warmth growing on the side of her head: blood; skin had been torn away by the jagged knuckles on its gauntlets.
She rolled out of the way of a kick, and dived for the abandoned gun. It was heavier than she'd expected; she'd never held one before. Her first shot missed, even with the kickback suppressors. The Xaosian kicked her in the ribs, and she heard something crack, before breathing became sharp and painful. The second shot hit the Xaosian in the chest, clipping the armour plating from below, and shearing it straight off. It stumbled back, and she jumped to her feet, and shot it twice more in the gap left by the sheared off armour. The Xaosian gasped; a death rattle, before it went down, chest covered in blood.
She stepped away from the corpse, arms going limp at her side; she barely kept hold of the gun, feeling it slip through open fingers. Hands shook, and knees threatened to buckle. She wiped her blood from her cheek. Breathing deeply to try and calm herself, she only felt pain from her cracked ribs, which were probably piercing a lung now. She coughed, and tasted copper. Her head span, the world span, and the ground threatened to come up to meet her.
From her skyscraper, she heard gunfire and screams. She sank to her knees and just stared straight ahead, mouth hanging open. I could have saved them. Self-loathing grew inside her, but her hatred for the Xaosians was stronger. She tightened her hold on her gun and got to her feet; she knew that, if she died, then their deaths were for nothing; she sacrificed them for herself.
Groaning.
A growing dread twisted her heart as she turned around to see the Xaosian she'd shot slowly stand back up. She stepped back, feeling the rage set in, but also confusion; I killed it. Hands stop
ped shaking, knees stood firm and she pumped the trigger, sending bullet after bullet into the Xaosian. Most bullets did nothing but dent the armour; she couldn't get the right angle on it again. I killed it. It darted towards her, running with a wild beast's speed. She aimed carefully at shot at its head. The helmet's visor cracked, and the Xaosian flinched, slowing it down briefly, before it lunged for her, grabbing the gun. She fought with it, pumping the trigger. The crack in the visor spread until it shattered. With a roar, the Xaosian grabbed the gun, shoving the barrel away from its face. She tried to fight back, push back, but for all her strength, the brute was too strong; she felt like her arms were about to snap.
But I killed it?
It kicked her in the stomach, throwing her back and wrenching the gun from her hands. She stumbled back, winded; it hurt even more to breathe now. Vision clouded with a red mist, and her last few seconds were filled with pain, confusion and regret. A lone tear mixed with the blood on her face.
A bullet went through her skull.
Chapter 2
Trexor 1
Trexor clenched his fists, staring at the horror outside via the huge array of screens. He watched hundreds – if not thousands – of Xaosian troops make barricades on the Military-Bridge from the debris that their Crushers, which remained to the sides of the barricade, had created. All around, buildings crumbled, their grey bricks falling from sky; this was a hard rain. Another screen showed him a view from Raan's orbit, where the Orbital Defence System (ODS) was in tatters, open circuitry and explosive pods suspended in the desolate vacuum. The Raanian Stinger-Class Aerospace-Fighters darted back and forth in a dreadful, almost ominous, silence. When the larger Xaosian ships fired upon them, they exploded in equal silence and when the ship was destroyed, the pilot's suit was ruptured and he asphyxiated in a deathly silence.
In the midst of the clash between Reapers and Stingers was a much larger ship.
The Dominion was a behemoth; a monstrous feat in Aerospace engineering, this ship fired upon what remained of Raan's ODS with the power of the Solus itself; inspired by the Adjeti World-Burner, The Dominion was able to convert light and heat into a laser-like weapon of mass destruction. Trexor watched the laser obliterate an Orbital Cannon, shattering it into jagged, blackened shards that joined its brothers in a floating grave.
As Trexor turned away from the screens, his eyes fell on a man on a stretcher, injured on the Bridge as the Xaosians first moved in. His right leg was stripped of skin, to the bone in some areas. Trexor could make out the pulsing arteries that spewed out spurts of blood like a half-empty bottle. In the few areas where dark pink muscle was still attached to bone, it was lacerated and burnt. But it wasn't just the man's leg that was injured; a chunk of his left cheek was missing, sheared off by flying shrapnel. In his younger years, Trexor may have retched at the very sight, but instead his nose wrinkled in disgust; he had seen worse injuries whilst patrolling the Northernmost parts of Tapal.
“Trexor!”
Trexor turned to see Admiral Fairns walking towards him. “Admiral.” Trexor responded, bowing his head briefly.
“We need you ext there.” The Admiral said. “Ext on the front lines.”
“And you would send us all to our deaths, sir.” Trexor replied, as bluntly as the Admiral had spoken.
The Admiral grimaced. “Then what would you suggest?”
“Get teams on the ground throughout Tapal. My team will protect this base and storm the bridge. I'll need cover from teams of snipers from the windows on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors and a barrage of cover fire from a lower floor; the fourth should work the best. Teams on the ground throughout Tapal.” Trexor said quickly; he had already thought this through, “Get the Stingers to distract and take down the Crushers in both the city and the two on the bridge.”
The Admiral mulled this over. “This seems viable. Get your team ready, I'll sort the rest.”
Trexor bowed his head again as the Admiral turned and walked away, speaking into his Communicator. “Idiot...” Trexor muttered.
No-one turned from the screens as Trexor walked by, the horrific images displayed both captivating and terrifying them. United in their silence, they gazed with wide eyes, most of them barely older than boys. Trexor shook his head; this was not right. He scanned the computer bays until he found what he was looking for.
“Tya?” Trexor approached the ODS monitoring station. “Where is Officer Amei?”
Tya was a very attractive woman, Trexor usually noticed. This time, the notion didn't come to him. Not because she was less attractive, but simply because he was scared. He could feel a vein pulsing in his neck, and his shoulders had tensed up, pulling on the scar tissue on his back.
“Amei is injured, I'm afraid.” Tya gestured to the medical bay. She lowered her voice. “Fairns sent him out there; stabbed in the stomach with a vibro-blade. Messy.” She rubbed her face; Trexor had identified this as a nervous tick years ago. “What do you need, General?”
“I just need one of the Orbital Cannons freed up for me.” Trexor sounded desperate; he knew it sounded desperate, but he wasn't entirely sure if it was real or just a façade. “I intend to push the Xaosians back, away from here. I may need assistance.”
Tya grimaced. “I don't think that's wise.” She pointed at the screens in front of her. “There are only four cannons still online, and only seventeen percent of the shield and defender satellites remain. We can't even contact the Viran right now. I can't give you any of that, I'm sorry General.”
“I'm not saying turn them off.” Trexor could feel a tingle in his hands and cramps around his stomach. “Just...reprogram the co-ordinates quickly when I ask. Or, I don't know, input them now, and switch channels later.”
“You haven't told me where to target on the ground.” Tya's voice grew louder, almost a shout. “I can target the edge of the bridge, if that's what you want, but I'm only giving it one quick burst; that's all we can really afford, or else more troops and ships can make it to the surface.”
Trexor drew a breath; it seemed he'd been holding it for hours. “Thank you.”
Tya dismissed his thanks. “Resume duty, General.”
Trexor bowed his head. “As so, Officer.”
There was a group of men – no, just kids, boys – near the the weapons bay, who turned to Trexor as he arrived. He surveyed them; there was probably but no more than a hundred of them; a rag-tag army of fresh-faced kids who had no place on a battlefield. All of their armours had pockmarks, dents and holes in, and Trexor could see wounds ranging from cuts and bruises, to a full bloody gash lining one man's face. “General Trexor, sir.” Another General – Reinf, he thought – acknowledged his arrival. The others soon followed suit, their voices wavering. Trexor sensed the fear emanating from them.
“Men. You have been chosen for this task because you are all we've got. I'm not going to sugar-coat this and say that you're the best, because you're probably not.” Trexor noticed that some of the men exchanged looks at this, but he continued anyway. “That aside, you are the last line of defence for this city. We are the last line. You may be scared right now, and you should be. The Xaosians ext there want you dead. Their machines want you dead. Their entire planet wants you to die. Hell, even Admiral Fairns was prepared to send us on a suicide mission. But I said no! Our planet needs more men, men like you. You may not be the best, but you are determined. You are still here, unlike the ones who fled earlier. Today, you fight for your planet, your family, your friends. But most of all, fight for yourselves. Fight for your lives until you are kicking and screaming. If you flee, you're likely to end up dead in a ditch, dishonoured. If you stay and fight with me, and we win, your rewards will be unparalleled.” The men exchanged looks, which Trexor read as more hopeful than before. It was time. “Let's kill them before they can kill us!” The men raised their weapons and cheered.
Trexor grabbed the General's Sword of Rank – just a larger vibro-blade – and a standard issue assault rifle, before
signalling one of the men to open the doors. “Let's do this.” he muttered whilst putting a helmet on, more to himself than to the others.
The doors opened.
Fire flew from the sky as Stingers targeted and fired upon the Crushers and Xaosians. Reapers closed in on the Stingers. One of the Crushers exploded. The other Crusher turned its turret and fired upon the Stingers. Most of the shots missed, but a lucky few hit, sending Stingers spiralling down before gouging a gash in the planet itself, or simply shattering it into an airborne oblivion. One exploded above the Bridge, sending shrapnel flying around Trexor and his men. Xaosian troops began to drop dead suddenly, not because of the Stingers, but the snipers in the base. A barrage of firepower shot from above, cracking Xaosian armour, and hurting Trexor's ears. Still one Crusher remained.
More Stingers fired upon the Crusher, drowning it in flames and smoke yet causing no significant damage to the behemoth itself. The barrage from above struck the Crusher, but ordinary bullets would never have pierced its armour. Titan Troop Carriers joined the battle now, the larger Xaosian ships opening fire on the Stingers. Stingers fell, before some veered off and returned fire on the Titan's. Another barrage of missiles fell upon the Crusher. It moved to the side, towards the edge of the bridge, firing still on the Stingers. But the pilots now targeted the barrels that the Crusher moved on, taking out the secondary turrets around them. The rocket fire and explosions deafened Trexor, but it pushed the Crusher back slowly.
Until it fell.
The Crusher was defeated by it's own back-heavy design, the weight of which dragged it down into the abyss below; the base was built over a pit, meaning there was only one way in, one way out via the bridge, making it easier to defend. Both Crushers were down now, and many of the Xaosians were injured, or had cracked armour.
“Go!” Trexor roared, pointing his sword forward.
With the Xaosian's barricades left in tatters, they had little defence from Trexor's charge and the barrages from above. Trexor took aim quickly, loosing a few quick shots at the Xaosians. The head-shots shattered their helmet's visors, and a following shot dropped them quickly, but the body-shots only forced them back, denting their armour.
